If you are a resident of Oakland County there are a number of things you could say about the past year and half.
You could be proud of how the county has handled the pandemic. It took measures pretty quickly in most cases. When Gov. Whitmer was stripped of her emergency powers, the Oakland County health department kept the mask mandate in place.
Residents saw doctors and nurses at Beaumont treating thousands of Covid patients.
It was the second county in the state to reach the 70% percent threshold.
It’s done a lot right, and it still might not be enough.
Covid numbers are on the rise, and it’s starting to get people’s attention.
Dr. Jeffrey Fischgrund, Chief of Clinical Care Programs, at Beaumont Health told the Oakland Press, “What you have to do is put things in perspective. If you look back at our surges. I’ll go back to the first one last April, we maxed out at all of Beaumont Health (8 hospitals) we had about 1,300 patients with COVID in the hospital. The second surge in November, we [sic] hit about 700. The one this past April we hit about 800.”
And now the hospital is seeing more and more patients, as the numbers have tripled from where they were this time last month. In July, the numbers hovered around 50 hospitalizations, and now they are over 150, “According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in Oakland County 3.02% of the hospital beds used are for COVID patients through Aug. 10 which is a 1.49% increase from the previous week. Also, the CDC reports that 5.67% of ICU beds in the county are being used for COVID patients which is up 1.44% from the previous week.”
It should also be mentioned that the numbers in the hospital show that the vaccine is still doing its job.
Currently there are 17 patients in the ICU at Beaumont. Of the 17, 16 of them are not vaccinated. Meaning 94% of the patients have not been vaccinated, which is in line with what hospitals are seeing nationally with regard to vaccinations preventing hospitalization, ““I think that’s a powerful message for the effectiveness of the vaccine,” Fischgrund said. “Yes, we may have breakthrough cases, but chances are you’re not going to really sick. If there’s a message here please get vaccinated.”
So far, Michigan is doing better than much of the country, “The New York Times reported that about one in five hospitals with intensive care units reported that at least 95% of their ICU beds were full. In the week that ended Aug. 5, nationally an average of 74% of ICU beds were occupied.”
Also earlier today, it was reported that there isn’t an open ICU bed within 100 miles of Nashville, one of the hardest hit places in the country.
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